USB Guitar compatiblity


bakawhite

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Sep 3, 2008
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148
Does anyone know anything about the iAxe electronics? I've been looking all over for pictures, providers or whatnot and haven't found a thing. I want to put the system in my own custom guitars and try to run the amp and pedal modeling off of Pandora. Someone find something and try and help me out, please.
 
Re: Gah!

player4 said:
Does anyone know anything about the iAxe electronics? I've been looking all over for pictures, providers or whatnot and haven't found a thing. I want to put the system in my own custom guitars and try to run the amp and pedal modeling off of Pandora. Someone find something and try and help me out, please.
not worth it, its purely garbage. you can get guitar to usb chords, anyway, which is really all it is, not any special features.
 
Re: Gah!

player4 said:
Does anyone know anything about the iAxe electronics? I've been looking all over for pictures, providers or whatnot and haven't found a thing. I want to put the system in my own custom guitars and try to run the amp and pedal modeling off of Pandora. Someone find something and try and help me out, please.

Not sure exactly what the i-Axe is but if you want to fit a system to your own guitar then you might want to take a look a the Roland GK3 split pickup. It adds a 13-pin output to your guitar which sends the signal from each sting individually. It's usually used for proprietary Roland equipment such as the GI-10, GR-20 and VG-99 but there's no reason you couldn't build a cable that splits it into 6 individual jack outputs.

Of course you'd then need a 6-channel USB soundcard which works with Pandora. THEN you'd need to write the amp and pedal modeling. It for sure won't be an easy task, or cheap to accomplish! Even when you've spent all that money on equipment and time developing it, you are going to have something that just doesn't do the job as well as the system you are trying to emulate.
 
Re: Gah!

Alriiiiiiiiiiiight! thank you! big help!
I was just interested in the iAxe sys. because it looked like some easy modding to fit. But then, why not start on my own. Good call on the Roland GK3, Pleng, thank you.
And, I'm off.
 
Re: Gah!

player4 said:
Alriiiiiiiiiiiight! thank you! big help!
I was just interested in the iAxe sys. because it looked like some easy modding to fit. But then, why not start on my own. Good call on the Roland GK3, Pleng, thank you.

Well if would have helped if you had provided a link to the iAxe so we knew what it was. From your original post you talked of modding {something guitar related} to work with the Pandora.

From that POV one would assume that you had some kind of knowledge of hardware modding and indeed writing software to make use of the system.

And, I'm off.

Shame
 
Re: Gah!

if you can carry your guitar with you, you can certainly tuck one of numberous small to tiny modelling effects someplace.
 
Re: Gah!

Alright, I guess you lot want some further information. Forthcoming.

I am learning to be a Luthier, until then I take apart and put back together guitars for sheer fun. I don't really know much about electronics and the modding thereof, but am learning as I go along with guitar studies.

The iAxe is here :http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/avcards/8c43/
It is a guitar designed by Behringer and has a system that derives the signals from the pickups to a USB cable. I think that's neat.

I thought that using my Pandora as a guitar amp would be the ultimate in neatness and functionality by having it in my pocket with my guitar plugged into it and totally rocking out. Using headphones or possibly transmitting to a speaker system through Bluetooth.

I would just buy an Amp-in-a-box or a Barn Burner. . . but that's just too easy.
 
Re: Gah!

Surely using an iAxe you just end up with a crap guitar?

Then the software is Windows/Mac. Vox amplug is good for headphone only use or otg, or one of the Line6 Pod devices for connecting up and effects.
 
Re: Gah!

player4 said:
Alright, I guess you lot want some further information. Forthcoming.

I am learning to be a Luthier, until then I take apart and put back together guitars for sheer fun. I don't really know much about electronics and the modding thereof, but am learning as I go along with guitar studies.

The iAxe is here :http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/avcards/8c43/
It is a guitar designed by Behringer and has a system that derives the signals from the pickups to a USB cable. I think that's neat.

I thought that using my Pandora as a guitar amp would be the ultimate in neatness and functionality by having it in my pocket with my guitar plugged into it and totally rocking out. Using headphones or possibly transmitting to a speaker system through Bluetooth.

I would just buy an Amp-in-a-box or a Barn Burner. . . but that's just too easy.
thats not how the iaxe works. you plug it into the usb port, then you plug an amp or powered headphones into the port on the bottom. you cant actually hear or output music from your pc. horrible shit, really. please dont get it, its a crappy product, crappy software, crappy hardware, and a crappy guitar.
 
Re: Gah!

player4 said:
Alright, I guess you lot want some further information. Forthcoming.

I am learning to be a Luthier, until then I take apart and put back together guitars for sheer fun. I don't really know much about electronics and the modding thereof, but am learning as I go along with guitar studies.

The iAxe is here :http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/avcards/8c43/
It is a guitar designed by Behringer and has a system that derives the signals from the pickups to a USB cable. I think that's neat.

I thought that using my Pandora as a guitar amp would be the ultimate in neatness and functionality by having it in my pocket with my guitar plugged into it and totally rocking out. Using headphones or possibly transmitting to a speaker system through Bluetooth.

I would just buy an Amp-in-a-box or a Barn Burner. . . but that's just too easy.

OK So what you have, essentially, is a USB guitar. I'm pretty sure the iAxe wasn't the first, but I could be wrong. So at the end of the day, you'd be better off with a USB sound-card that accepts guitar-level input (as is supported by Pandora). That way you can use it with any existing guitar, and not have to worry about specific drivers for the iAxe's USB output.

You then have the problem of software for the amp modeling. As I said before, decent amp modeling costs thousands of pounds to develop, so you're out of luck unless you want to code it yourself. There's plenty commercial stuff around for Windows and MacOS, but not for Linux.

Honestly you'd be better off with a V-Amp, Pod, or one of the Boss modeling units. If you then wanted to capture the sound on your Pandora you could go straight into the line-ins (which I believe will be provided on the TV-out cable?). You wouldn't need to worry about a soundcard which accepts the hot guitar signals as all the modelers output line level friendly signals.
 
Re: Gah!

That all is why I wanted just the electronics. If nothing else, to remake them. I have noticed newer "digital" guitars running a USB/MIDI from a specialized pickup, I wanted to see the system for transmitting to USB to see if I could use something similar. I really don't want an iAxe, it looks like crap, I just want a similar system.
 
Re: Gah!

Now I understand where you are coming from. A little reverse engineering. Yes, it would be interesting to be able to do that.

Are you thinking of modding a guitar to put the gubbins inside so that the signal is converted direct to USB? If not, don't you want to be able to convert the sound output from the guitar to USB? Please could you give a little more detail...
 
Re: Gah!

I'm thinking do both. a simple plug that I could integrate easily if I wanted to. sounds difficult, but I'm not in a rush.
 
Re: Gah!

Please keep us informed if you do try this...

edit: Going back to what I said earlier, why not change the title and see if that more readers...
 
There, now it looks epic. I have my concept thrown together, I don't know how I'm going to be able to do everything I want it to, I was actually thinking of making it with onboard software potable-apps style it might be easier that way, with apps pre-configured to find the device, no drivers needed.
 
Re: Gah!

Pleng said:
player4 said:
Does anyone know anything about the iAxe electronics? I've been looking all over for pictures, providers or whatnot and haven't found a thing. I want to put the system in my own custom guitars and try to run the amp and pedal modeling off of Pandora. Someone find something and try and help me out, please.

Not sure exactly what the i-Axe is but if you want to fit a system to your own guitar then you might want to take a look a the Roland GK3 split pickup. It adds a 13-pin output to your guitar which sends the signal from each sting individually. It's usually used for proprietary Roland equipment such as the GI-10, GR-20 and VG-99 but there's no reason you couldn't build a cable that splits it into 6 individual jack outputs.

Of course you'd then need a 6-channel USB soundcard which works with Pandora. THEN you'd need to write the amp and pedal modeling. It for sure won't be an easy task, or cheap to accomplish! Even when you've spent all that money on equipment and time developing it, you are going to have something that just doesn't do the job as well as the system you are trying to emulate.

Firstly, the iAxe is NOT a midi instrument, it is basically a cheap guitar with a usb audio interface built in. For a simple and imo better alternative that can be used with any guitar or bass, Google stealthplug. There are also other guitar to usb solutions.

Secondly, if you wanna use a gk3 divided pickup, you need either a gi20 or a similar midi converter for guitar to convert the pitch to midi. AFAIK the roland GI20 connects to hardware synths or to pc via usb to control software synths so you don't even need a pc midi interface. It should even work with pandora to some extent as long as pandora can accept midi signals from usb, and if there are software synths available to run on it.

How good the midi instruments/patches pandora will be able to process sound and how much latency there will be remains to be seen. :D
And setting up your guitar for midi is no cheap exercise.

Anyway, iAxe is cheap and nasty, but you could tinker with it and make it useable. For the price, its not bad and it looks like it would be fun once you tweak it so it actually stays in tune. I've read it needs to be set up and the frets need to be dressed out of the box, and the machine heads are crap. And I wouldn't trust that whammy bar :P

Godin make nice guitars with midi stuff built in. Check em out. And like I said, for a cheap guitar to usb plug that comes with some neat software, check out the stealthplug.

Hope this info helps. :D
 
Okay, yeah, but there's no software to run it on linux, so that's still not what I want. unless someone has evidence it can run on wine. ... can wine run on Pandora though?
 
player4 said:
can wine run on Pandora though?
No, it can't run on the Pandora, ever. Wine is designed to use existing Windows DLLs (and some separately written ones), it's not a full OS+CPU emulator. Thus, won't run on an ARM CPU.
 
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